1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to an optical interconnection circuit among wavelength multiplexing chips, an electro-optical device, and an electronic apparatus.
2. Description of Related Art
Electro-luminescence panels (ELPs), plasma display panels (PDPs), and liquid crystal displays (LCDs) are recently used as plane display devices. In such plane display devices, a technology of using light to transmit signals is used in order to address the problem of signal delay caused by an increase in the sizes of the plane display devices and large capacity display.
In computers, operation speed (an operation clock) inside CPUs increases year by year, as the internal structures of integrated circuits become minute. However, in buses to connect the CPUs to peripheral devices, such as memories, signal transmission speed substantially reaches its limit thereby becoming a bottleneck in the processing speed of computers. When optical signals are used to transmit signals among the buses, it is possible to remarkably enhance the processing speed of computers.
In order to transmit data using the optical signals, optical transmission devices to transmit the optical signals emitted from a light source to a predetermined place and inputting the transmitted optical signals to a light receiving element is required. In the related art, an optical fiber and an optical waveguide formed on a substrate are used as the optical transmission devices.
However, when optical fiber is used as the optical transmission device, connections between optical parts, such as a light emitting element and a light receiving element, are complicated. Therefore, it costs too much and takes long to fabricate the optical transmission device. Also, it is difficult to miniaturize the optical transmission device.
Therefore, it is considered to simplify the connections between optical transmission media and the light emitting element and the light receiving element using an optical waveguide formed on a substrate. However, input and output structures suitable for the optical waveguide have not yet been found. Optical transmission devices that are so minute and easily fabricated as to be applied to plane display devices or computers have not yet been realized.
To address the above problem, the present invention provides an optical interconnection circuit among wavelength multiplexing chips, an electro-optical device, and an electronic apparatus which are capable of increasing signal transmission speed and of being easily made minute thereby being simply and easily fabricated.